Iain Martin is a political commentator, and a former editor of The Scotsman and former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He is the author of Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the men who blew up the British economy, published by Simon & Schuster.. As well as this blog, he writes a column for The Sunday Telegraph. You can read more about Iain by visiting his website

Obama or Romney, this has been a rubbish US election

I have tried with this US election. I've watched the debates. I've faithfully read my usual and excessive amount of coverage. I was raised to be fascinated by these contests, caring about America and finding the spectacle of that great country going to the polls thrilling. Sadly, this election has been, for the most part, rubbish.

The pollsters have played a part in sucking the life out of the contest. An upset would mainly be amusing for the distress it could cause in that department. Yet the blame must lie principally with the candidates themselves.

It is not that there is absolutely no difference between Obama and Romney. Of course there is a difference. The reason I would rather Romney emerged as the winner is that what really matters – in terms of the interests of America and the West – is the economy. On this subject Mr Obama (listless until the last 48 hours) seems pretty much clueless. Romney is not exactly Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, but unlike Obama he does seem to have some understanding that it really would be a good idea to make company formation, employment and wealth creation easier and much more widespread. If America recovers strongly, it will help the UK.

No, what is disconcerting is that American politics seems to be shrinking, as though it is no longer good at doing what it once used to do with relative ease. America's system has tended to be rather marvellous at producing the right person for the right moment at points of crisis or change. I think of Lincoln, T Roosevelt and of FDR (magnificent in the way he restored confidence, even if a lot of what he then did was a waste of time and money). Or the wonderful Truman, who saw the postwar situation and the Cold War so clearly when many foreign policy experts did not. Even LBJ merits a mention. He was a deeply flawed man who put his magnetic personality to work in the service of great work on civil rights after the assassination of the media's favourite president, the well-tailored but considerably over-rated JFK. Then there was Reagan. Ah… Reagan. Four years ago I hoped that Barack Obama might, just might, be worthy of being added to the list of greats. It was not to be be. What a professorial poltroon and loftily detached disappointment he turned out to be.

However, the curious thing is that during the last four years American politics has actually been a lively affair brimming with ideas, even if some of them were on occasion loopy. The financial crisis produced two noisy movements at different ends of the spectrum which in their different ways tapped into anger and motivated many millions. On the liberal Left there was the Occupy movement, whose supporters posed some of the right questions about vested interests even if they too often came up with predictable and wrong-headed answers. On the Right there was the tumultuous Tea Party, whose advocates were also asking interesting questions, in their case about the size and scope of government. Yet it all fizzled out, leaving us with a rather dull, centrist election campaign between two not very inspiring candidates.